Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Happy New Year

Waiting for a friend to pick me up to go to lunch, I walked around the yard today, taking winter photos. Enjoy the tour of the yard as I recall Christmas day!. So here is how Christmas went. Christmas was great. I spent it with a few friends in town. At one point on Christmas morning, we drove around in Athens, and were admiring how closed down the city was. "Yay!" we'd say, passing a closed and shuttered Wal-Mart. "Good for them!" we'd shout when passing an empty mall. It was also spooky. Weird that there were literally NO cars (lol, except ours) on the city streets. It was like Day One on "Life After People."


We returned to their house and started making brunch. They had just gotten back the evening before from North Carolina, having visited their daughter and son-in-law for Christmas Eve. Therefore, there was no turkey cooking, lol, but we were thrilled with making 15 grain toast, home fries, and omelets. Retiring to the living room, we watched "A Little House on the Prairie Christmas", hokey I know but sweet and charming also. After that, we exchanged gifts and talked until early evening. That was Christmas.



This Christmas vacation since then  has also been great. I've had plenty of time to do what I love best: read, write, and research. I read Christian novels. I usually spend most of my day researching deep hermeneutics, bible interpretation, and my brain longs for something lighter by the time night comes and it's time to kick back. I read a very good Christian book called "Tides of Truth: Deeper Water." I liked it very much and appreciated the character development and scene-setting. Best of all, it is the first book in a series so there are more coming. I read some other books too but they are forgettable, only time-passers designed to provide their part in a relaxing night-time apartment environment.


Yesterday I spent a good amount of time at the library tutoring another friend on how to use the internet. She is fearful but curious, so we brought our laptops, set them up in tandem at the back table so we wouldn't disturb anyone,  and dove in. Today I went to Olive Garden with a friend who had received a gift certificate and she called me to share it with! Woo-hoo!  We enjoyed lunch very much. I had that great special, the endless soup and salad and breadsticks thing. I admit I had two bowls of salad. If I could make dressing like that I would eat salads every day. I saw a bunch of friends at the restaurant, which was great.



Being in Athens already, and making use of the gas, we did some errands after lunch. She had to go to a vitamin store in the mall, and lo and behold the vitamin store had bulk nasal salt! I've been looking for that since I moved to Georgia. I can get nasal salt for my neti pot/ nasal wash at the local drug stores, but it is in pre-packaged packets, like sugar is. 100 to a box and it's kind of expensive, $11.00. This jar was $5.50 and offered about the same amount of nasal washes. I use the stuff when I have a cold or bronchitis and I would not live without my nasal salt!. I definitely felt like I'd scored!


My friend had a couple more errands to do, one of them being the Christian bookstore in town, an always fun stop. I leafed through a Chuck Norris book, "written by the actual Chuck Norris!" but I wasn't temped to buy anything I had browsed in the store. Back home, I made some tea and checked my Facebook page. And then wrote a blog entry!

Happy 2010!

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Sundays are for Masterpiece Theatre

I spent a wonderful evening Sunday watching a reprise of Masterpiece Theatre's "Cranford." I hadn't see it on its first go-round, so I was delighted to stumble across this fantastically well-written and funny drama. The ripostes, the retorts, the language...it was music to my ears. Further, it brought to mind happy high school days.

You see, I am a nerd. A geek. A brain. Someone people edge away from because of my social ineptitude and penchant for seques that are far removed from current conversation but which to me, make perfect sense. In high school, I felt that spending an evening outside and cold, uncomfortable on wet bleachers, and screaming my head off for the football win was less than desirable. So I stayed home and watched I, Claudius. The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Elizabeth R, I, Claudius, Upstairs, Downstairs, crown jewels of the Masterpiece Theatre of the 1970s. Like I said. Geek.

Watching Cranford brought back all that I love about period pieces with high wit and good writing, great costumes and a moral point. An example of the writing:

"Put no further pastries to your lips for you will choke when you hear the news I must report."

"Miss Deborah Jenkyns: I would prefer it if I did not enjoy oranges;   consuming them is a most incommodious business."

LOL. Anyway, I recommend Cranford. Masterpiece Theatre, 9 pm Sundays. It's better than football!

Merry Mao Christmas!

 Breitbart's Exclusive: Transvestites, Mao And Obama Ornaments Decorate White House Christmas Tree

Why let a holiday season come between the White House and making some political statements? The White House pegged controversial designer Simon Doonan to oversee the Christmas decorations for the White House. Mr. Doonan, who is creative director of Barney’s New York has often caused a stir with his design choices. Like his naughty yuletide window display of Margaret Thatcher as a dowdy dominatrix and Dan Quayle as a ventriloquist’s dummy. For this year’s White House, he didn’t disappoint.



These photos of ornaments on the White House Christmas tree in the Blue Room were taken just days ago. Of course, Mao has his place in the White House.
And, of course, it wouldn’t be Christmas without an ornament of legendary transvestite Hedda Lettuce.



He/She even signed it:


And, so soon after collecting the Nobel Peace Prize, why wouldn’t the White House have an ornament super-imposing President Obama onto Mt. Rushmore:



Post from Andrew Breitbart's Big Government.

Monday, December 21, 2009

Ice, Georgia style

Anything frozen is an attraction to a Georgian. Ice doesn't last long down here, so when I saw that the edge of a puddle in my yard had frozen overnight, I took some microphotos of it.





Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Corner View: Books

Jane's Corner View this week is "Books." Be sure to check out the link which links to all the other Corner Views on this week's theme!


City Lights Books, San Francisco


City Lights is an independent bookstore- publisher combination that specializes in world literature, the arts, and progressive politics. It also houses the nonprofit City Lights Foundation, which publishes selected titles related to San Francisco culture. It was founded in 1953 by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin (who left two years later). Both the store and the publishers became widely known following the obscenity trial of Ferlinghetti for publishing Allen Ginsberg's influential poem Howl and Other Poems...

It is a mecca of the Beats, the crowd that came to the fore in the late 1940s and early 1950s. "In 1953, as Ferlinghetti was walking past the Artigues Building, he encountered Martin out front hanging up a sign that announced a "Pocket Book Shop." He introduced himself as a contributor to Martin's magazine City Lights, and told him he had always wanted a bookstore. Before long he and Martin agreed to a partnership. Each man invested $500."

I love traveling and where I am, if there is something related to books, I go there. Paris was Shakespeare & Co. and Gertrude Stein's house; Key West meat Hemingway's house where he wrote A Farewell to Arms and To Have and Have to among others; Florence meat walking where Dante walked and his house is still there...anyway, San Francisco meant ground zero for the Beats, and Richard Brautigan. I love Brautigan's works, and for a time, chased down the more elusive ones vigorously. Walking in to City Lights Books, with its warped floors and steeped history was thrilling. And all the books! Floor after floor.

Ahhh, books. I love them.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

'Obamaville' sign posted near homeless camp

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- Someone has put a lot of thought into a welcome sign that may surprise you, it's in front of a homeless camp off I-25 in Colorado Springs. Its message, "Welcome to Obamaville, Colorado's fastest growing community." Despite repeated calls no one could answer the question, who put up the sign? To some homeless the sign's message says enough. Mark Limonez, a homeless man living in "tent city", says the sign doesn't make him feel good about trying to get back on his feet. "Guys are trying to work but there's not enough work out there, so they go pan handling or flag a sign" Limonez says, "I've never seen so many camps since I've been out in the streets - there's no money." There are no logos on the front of the sign and no clues to where it comes from.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

White rose in December

This rose is in my North Georgia yard, on a mature bush that blooms heartily in summer with lots of roses. We've had three hard frosts yet this rose is blooming in December. Is this unusual?

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Corner View: Evening

Jane at Spain Daily has a themed weekly blog entry going, called Corner View. It's the view from our little corner of the world. This week's theme was "evening.," Here's mine, and be sure to check out Jane's other participants' Corner Views, listed at her blog, linked above.


My tiger cat Bert is literally evening and also emblematic of evening. After a long day at school, I come home at 3pm to my second shift, writing. I run an e-mail free subscription prophecy newsletter, and I also run an end time blog. That, and the occasional newspaper column plus this blog's writings, keep me busy all evening. I write at my kitchen table on my laptop, and Bert and my other cat Luke doze on the couch. But around 7 pm I call it quits and curl up on the couch with them. By this time of the evening I'm in my comfy clothes, usually sweats and a loose cotton shirt, with the afghan tucked around my knees. The remote is handy, so I don't have to get up. See, that is what it's all about in the evening, how long can I go without having to get up? I have my tea and my bible, which I read a bit before turning on the tv.

So, relaxed kitties, gentle reading, some innocuous tv, and a couch. That's my evening.

Saturday, December 05, 2009

Parade then snack

I had such a nice day today. The weather forecast was predicting a "wintry mix" of snow and rain, so many people were worried that the annual Christmas parade would be canceled or otherwise adversely affected. It is a large parade, and along with the participants there's also a with live nativity, vendors selling boiled peanuts and biscuit sandwiches and donuts, the annual Craft Fair over at the school, the 5K run, and children's choral performances. That's a lot of people who would be affected! But the day's dawned clouds quickly turned to sun. The sunshine warmed the temps a bit and the rain never came.

By 1:00 the day was warm if you stayed out of the wind and if you were in the wind it was still warm-ish. The crowd was relaxed and smiling, the animals at the live nativity were placid, the sun was high and all was well. I took lots and lots of photos, which can be viewed here. After a couple of hours outside and walking and walking, I headed home when the last horse passed by and the parade was officially done.

Mmm, 3:00 and time for a mid-afternoon snack. How about a toasted mini-muffin and a slice of lemon pound cake with fresh blueberries? Hot tea with milk completed the picture. So this is the real me: Formica fifties table oh-so-cute, snack with tea, and laptop. Mmm, life is good.

Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings advocates porn for classroom

Yesterday, Gateway Pundit posted a lengthy and explicit article showing that Obama's Schools Czar promoted porn books for the classroom. I was skeptical at first, thinking this was simply another inflated and hyperbolic headline in increasingly inflated and hyperbolic headlines designed to attract attention from an increasingly stupidly drugged and perverted nation. But it isn't. I read the post and I read the conent and it is quite true. Then, Gateway Pundit came under cyber attack not once but twice. So the call went out to re-post the Gateway Pundit information so that it will be out there and increasingly difficult to wipe from the net. So here it is.

Beware, this is sickeningly true. Gateway Pundit posted the scanned pages of the offending books along with a transcript, so you can see the original material and determine for yourself that it is all evilly correct. The Safe Schools czar lists books with pornographic content as appropriate reading material for elementary and high school students. I am not making this up. Read on, brothers and sisters, read on. If you dare.

Founding Bloggers' warning:
FROM GATEWAY PUNDIT (PART I):
[Ed note: Part two is the posting of the offending material, which you can go read at the many links provided, but I won't post it here. On to Gateway Pundit's expose--]

Scott Baker from Breitbart-TV.com and Co-Host of ‘The B-Cast‘ submitted this shocking report today on Obama’s deviant Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings.
—-Warning on Content—–

I was recently approached by a team of independent researchers that I have known for some time and have come to trust. They prepared this report involving ‘Safe Schools Czar’ Kevin Jennings and the organization he founded, GLSEN, and asked that I find a way to help draw attention to what they uncovered. Knowing that Gateway Pundit has followed Kevin Jennings since his appointment, as we have on The B-Cast (here, here, and here), and on Breitbart.tv (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here), I felt this would be an appropriate place for this report.
Warning: The following material is very explicit.



Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings was the founder, and for many years, Executive Director of an organization called the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). GLSEN started essentially as Jennings’ personal project and grew to become the culmination of his life’s work. And he was chosen by President Obama to be the nation’s Safe Schools Czar primarily because he had founded and led GLSEN (scroll for bio).

GLSEN’s stated mission is to empower gay youth in the schools and to stop harassment by other students. It encourages the formation of Gay Student Alliances and condemns the use of hateful words. GLSEN also strives to influence the educational curriculum to include materials which the group believes will increase tolerance of gay students and decrease bullying. To that end, GLSEN maintains a recommended reading list of books that it claims “furthers our mission to ensure safe schools for all students.” In other words, these are the books that GLSEN’s directors think all kids should be reading: gay kids should read them to raise their self-esteem, and straight kids should read them in order to become more aware and tolerant and stop bullying gay kids. Through GLSEN’s online ordering system, called “GLSEN BookLink,” featured prominently on their Web site, teachers can buy the books to use as required classroom assignments, or students can buy them to read on their own.

According to GLSEN’s own press releases from the period during which its recommended reading list was developed, the organization’s three areas of focus were creating “educational resources, public policy agenda, [and] student organizing programs”; in other words, the reading list (chief among its “educational resources”) was of prime importance in GLSEN’s efforts to influence the American educational system.

The list is divided into three main categories: books recommended for grades K-6; books recommended for grades 7-12; and books for teachers. (The books on the list span all genres: fiction, nonfiction, memoirs, even poetry.)

Out of curiosity to see exactly what kind of books Kevin Jennings and his organization think American students should be reading in school, our team chose a handful at random from the over 100 titles on GLSEN’s grades 7-12 list, and began reading through.

What we discovered shocked us. We were flabbergasted. Rendered speechless.

We were unprepared for what we encountered. Book after book after book contained stories and anecdotes that weren’t merely X-rated and pornographic, but which featured explicit descriptions of sex acts between pre-schoolers; stories that seemed to promote and recommend child-adult sexual relationships; stories of public masturbation, anal sex in restrooms, affairs between students and teachers, five-year-olds playing sex games, semen flying through the air. One memoir even praised becoming a prostitute as a way to increase one’s self-esteem. Above all, the books seemed to have less to do with promoting tolerance than with an unabashed attempt to indoctrinate students into a hyper-sexualized worldview.

We knew that unless we carefully documented what we were reading, the public would have a hard time accepting it. Mere descriptions on our part could not convey the emotional gut reaction one gets when seeing what Kevin Jennings wants kids to read as school assignments. So we began scanning pages from each of the books, and then made exact transcriptions of the relevant passages on each page.

Are we exaggerating, or misconstruing quotes that could be interpreted a different way? No: Read the passages below and judge for yourself. There’s no wiggle room. The language is explicit, the intent clear.
To be specific, the books we read were:

Queer 13
Being Different
The Full Spectrum
Revolutionary Voices
Reflections of a Rock Lobster
Passages of Pride
Growing Up Gay/Growing Up Lesbian
The Order of the Poison Oak
In Your Face
Mama’s Boy, Preacher’s Son
Love & Sex: Ten Stories of Truth

We can only vouch for what’s in these 11 books, since these are the only ones we’ve read through. Are there other books on the GLSEN reading list that are similarly outrageous? We can’t say for sure, but it seems very likely. What you see excerpted below is probably only the tip of the iceberg.

Let it be clear: This issue has nothing to do with gayness or straightness, which is irrelevant to this report. The point proven here is that the GLSEN reading list promotes the sexualization of children in general, regardless of the “orientation.”

And this is not about censorship: It’s about deciding what constitutes appropriate reading material for children. We’re perfectly OK with these books existing and being read by adults; we only start to worry when these books are assigned to children. All sorts of books are excluded from school reading lists, for all sorts of reasons. Even many books once considered classics are now considered off-limits due to language or attitudes now deemed inappropriate. And yet, according to Kevin Jennings and GLSEN, books about a 13-year-old getting “my cock sucked and my ass fucked” or about a teenager enjoying the “exquisite bitter taste” of his friend’s semen are not just acceptable, they’re highly recommended. As GLSEN’s own site says, “All BookLink items are reviewed by GLSEN staff for quality and appropriateness of content.” Really? (Note: GLSEN does advise adults to “review content for suitability.”)

Although GLSEN does not address how books get added to its list, it’s hard to imagine that they are chosen by low-level staffers or volunteers, with no oversight. Since the list of recommended books is one of the organization’s primary tools (”The GLSEN BookLink, an online library of recommended resources, along with the Safe Space program remain cornerstones of GLSEN’s education work.” source), it’s likely that the books were chosen carefully. Kevin Jennings stepped down as Executive Director last year after leading GLSEN since its inception, but every single book mentioned in this report was added to the list while Jennings was in charge (dates are given for each title’s addition to the list). Therefore, it’s reasonable to believe he was aware of the addition of these works – especially since most were added when GLSEN was still quite small and the Executive Director had a hands-on role in daily operations.
Below you will find dozens of excerpts taken from books on the GLSEN “Booklink” recommended reading list for grades 7-12 (i.e. for children between the ages of 12 and 17). To prove that these books are indeed recommended by GLSEN for children, click on each book’s title to see its individual listing on the GLSEN Web site. And to prove that each excerpt is transcribed exactly as it appears in each book, click on the page numbers or the small images along the left to see scans taken directly of the book pages in question. (Ellipses ["..."] indicate unrelated passages not included in some of the transcriptions; click on the full-page scans to see the complete extended quotes.) Each passage is preceded by a brief summary, given in italics.
You decide for yourself if you think these are appropriate for kids as young as 12 years old to read. And then decide if you think the man who headed the organization responsible for recommending these books to children should be in charge of school safety in this country.
Content Warning:
Keep in mind that, although the material below has been deemed by Kevin Jennings and GLSEN to be appropriate for children, some of the excerpts contain explicit language and pornographic descriptions, so if you don’t want to see such things, stop reading now.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Friday, November 27, 2009

What I saw on my Thanksgiving drive

I am always completely charmed by Madison County. We have our historic covered bridge, our park, wonderful schools, nice people, and something that always delights me (city gal): animals, animals, animals!

I've blogged before about the wonderful animals around, chickens, goats, cats, sheep, horses, buffalo (!), turkey buzzards, eagles, birds, and dogs, but yesterday took the cake.

On my way to Thanksgiving dinner with friends in Colbert, I passed such scenes of rural beauty it took my breath away. The leaves are still clinging to the trees and the sun was very bright, clear, and warm. The pampas grass was waving and the roads turned and curled and as each turn was made the new scene was more breathtaking than the last.









Wait a minute! What was THAT??? Backing up, a dangerous thing to do on a narrow, curvy road, I swung by to take a second look. Sure enough, this ostrich looking bird was pacing the fence parallel to the road. What IS it? I thought. Wonders never cease. First the buffalo and now this.



My friend Christie from "Life at the Condo (With Toddler)" answered my Facebook question with, "emu"? And sure enough, it is, as a comparable photo confirms.



What is an emu doing in Colbert GA? Emu farming's virtues are extolled here, it is a totally usable bird but the oil apparently is liquid gold. They require little feed and little ground space. I have no clue if the farm at Colbert is an oil or meat agribusiness or if the emu has other virtues and that's why it's there. For example, Pineland Farms in New Gloucester Maine keeps a guard llama with their sheep. The one I met was called Zorro.

In researching this emu thing I discovered that there is an emu farm on the other side of the county at Bowman. Fancy Feather Farms raises emus for oil and for meat, along with free range chickens and free range beef, and lots of other things. You can visit, which I might do one of these days.

So that's why I love it here. There are always surprises.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

What I saw on my walk today





 
 
 
 

Things that clacked

When I was a kid, I'd visit my aunt's office. I spent time playing with the wonderland of things that presented themselves to a six year old kid. A 1960's office held great things, most of them consigned to history's dustbin by now, sadly so. These were things that clacked.

IBM Selectric typewriters made noise. The carriage ticked as you put in paper. The typewriter keys clacked when you struck them. The machine binged when you got to the end of the page. The typewriter clattered as you yanked the page out of the roller.

The electric calculator had huge, solid buttons, which made a satisfying plonk when you pressed them, and the roll of paper advanced with a  hearty snap.

The office rubber stamps had a hefty spring that boinked when it snapped up from a satisfying downward stroke. The rotary phone back-dial skittered and stuttered. Even the heavy oak office chairs boomed as you moved it from one place to another, so heavy were they. I have one and the knob to adjust the height is massive and the screw even more humongous. The 1966 office was an office that made noise. It sounded productive.

Today's office machines are not as satisfying. The computers whir, the calculator beeps, the cell phone whines. Everything is so ... light and insubstantial. You see, my reminiscence began with a stapler. I have a Swingline, a tried and true name to be sure. It has a translucent top and is really light. It also jams when you put staples in and it jams when you use it. It is made of plastic. It gets the job done...usually...but it is certainly not a pleasure to use.

It got me thinking about where we have come from and where we are going. Look at the first, early stapler here, a Hotchkiss from the late 1800s. Isn't it gorgeous???


These were from the 1960s, heavy metal, and solid, never-jamming and useful life practically as long as Methuselah. Now this, from today's lightweight Swingline and the infamous Swingline Tot stapler. A nickel is included for scale.


Now, I do not miss White Out, nor carbon paper. Messy they were. As an aside, carbon paper, when you inserted a piece between two sheets that you were typing you could make a copy as you went along. That is where we got "carbon copy" from and is what CC on the email means. But I do miss heavy-duty, well-made tools that keep on working flawlessly every time you needed them. I'm glad I have a stapler, it's convenient. But I miss my heavy stapler I'd found in an old office supply furniture store in Auburn Maine. Now, where did that go?

Monday, November 23, 2009

A tale of sleep apnea, in pictures


After I saw this one morning, I wondered why am I not sleeping? I had just arisen from a cozy 4-post bed in a little cabin by the cove I rented each year in Lubec Maine. Why are the covers tortured, twisted, and evidence war on sleep, not peace? I thought, why do I not sleep, even on vacation?



A few years later a doctor recommended a sleep apnea test. I wrote before that I had gone through the paces and the docs found I wake up 30 times an hour and hold my breath up to a minute and a half. I am in the highest category for those who "don't wake up." Oh. So the mask forces oxygen into my nose and lungs even if I stop breathing. It keeps an even circulation at night so my brain doesn't deplete and I wake up even more tired than when I went to bed, an ever-devolving cycle that leads to eventual breakdown.



And now I sleep like a baby! In the morning I simply throw the covers back like this to get up, and to make the bed only have to flip them up again. It looks like no one even slept in it! I sleep deeply, don't wake up constantly, and awake refreshed. Life is good.




Saturday, November 21, 2009

My day so far, every gory detail

So the upcoming work week is school-free. The three days of Thanksgiving comprise the usual school break and the Monday and Tuesday are two additional no-pay days off that the state kindly foisted upon all school departments in a cost saving measure. They're called "furlough days." So I have the week off, but I don't get paid. But I have the week off! Might as well relax.

So this morning I went to the library and topped up on books. I renewed Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo. The NY Times says "The big contours of “Bridge of Sighs” are richly evocative and beautifully wrought, delivered with deceptive ease." Isn't that just like NY Times Book Review language? LOL. I wonder how the little contours are. Anyway, I hadn't started the book yet so renewal was necessary.

Stealing Lumby, a little, light book, by Gail Fraser, the second in a series that features a small town with quirky characters and a small-town newspaper at the center of it. The first book in the series was Lumby Lines, the name of the paper. The series evokes Jan Karon's Mitford series, but not as well written. The covers even look the same. But I like them because I am hoping the writing will mature with the series and it is clean, light, and cute literature. I read these kind of books at school when I have a break.

Gone to Green, Christian fiction by Judy Christie.  Strangely, this paperback also has at center a successful big-city journalist, who never imagined ending up in the tiny town of Green, La. She never guessed that within months she would unexpectedly inherit a smalltown newspaper. Hmmm. (tongue firmly in cheek).

One Second After, a great book about the immediate aftermath of an Electro-Magnetic Pulse. It's an apocalyptic thriller like "On The Beach" but on steroids. Personally, I think a destructive EMP will be detonated over the US soon. I never forgot the opening scene in Whitley Strieber's Warday, published in 1984, depicting in detail what happens when all electronics are immediately rendered neutralized. Twenty-five years after Warday was published, our dependance on electronics has only grown exponentially and shat means, so has our vulnerability. I'm looking forward to reading One Second After, depicting the EMP but in more modern terms.

And yes, it's come to this, John Grisham's "The Associate." Washington Post reviewer says In 2005, as part of an Alcoholics Anonymous recovery program, a Las Vegas man wrote letters of apology to people he might have harmed in his drinking days. One letter went to a woman who in 1984 had claimed that he raped her at a fraternity party when they were students at the University of Virginia, only to have her charges dismissed by police and school officials. But given the man's admission in his letter, the woman called police, and he was charged with rape; after plea bargaining, he served six months in a Virginia prison for a lesser offense. The case was extensively reported in Charlottesville, where the novelist John Grisham now lives, and he has made a fictional version of it central to "The Associate," his 21st novel."

As for legal thrillers, I love 'em. In my twenties I read "The Trial of Socrates" by I.F. Stone, then later in my thirties complicated legal non-fiction like "One L" by Scott Turow,  "A Civil Action" by Jonathan Harr, "And The Sea Will Tell" by Vincent Bugliosi. And now in my forties, Grisham. I shudder to see what my brain will be like in my fifties...lol.

Next on the reading stack is "Orbit, NASA Astronauts photograph the earth". When my eyes get too tired at night to read or computerize, but don't want to watch tv, I like a big, pretty coffee table book. The photos are wonderful in this book, and I have always enjoyed looking at aerial, topo, or satellite maps. The last coffee table book I checked out was "Titanic: the last great images".

Then I headed to the Marketplace, a small grocery store serving Danielsville. They have good prices and I only needed a few items. I got a dozen eggs, sour cream, an 8 lb sack of russet potatoes, margarine, a banana, scallions, and potato sticks for $7. At the Dollar Store I got another few items, Jiffy Corn Muffin mix donation for the food pantry, creamer, popcorn for movies this week, and peanuts for Asian dishes I make- all for $4. The food pantries are going gangbusters as well as the church panries. There is such need these days! I fueled up a tank of gas, drove home the slow way, and generally feel pretty good with myself. Food, gas, books, all fuel for the body, car, and mind. I'm ready to go! Actually, I'm ready to stay! LOL.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Exciting weather quizzes

I was subbing in the fourth grade today. A bunch of 4th grades got together and played Jeopardy on the large-scale, wall computer (Smart Board). This was a review for a weather quiz they are having tomorrow. I was impressed with how much the kids knew about weather instruments, atmospheric conditions, cold and warm fronts, severe weather, and all the rest.

They got so excited and at one point they were bubbling over with pride in what they knew and in the excitement of the game. The question was posed about two kinds of fair weather clouds. In his group to debate the answer, one shouted, "Cyrus and Curious!"

LOL. The finally got it ironed out to cirrus and cumulus and won $400, Alex.